Description

By January 2015 the world’s richest 80 people had as much wealth as the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population. It is a global unevenness through which the barriers to in-migration of Third World migrants to wealthy First World nations go ever higher, while the barriers to travel in the reverse direction are all but extinct.

So how exactly does tourism contribute to narrowing this glaring inequality between the rich and poor? Are ever-expanding tourism markets a smoke-free, socioculturally sensitive form of human industrialisation? Is alternative tourism really a credible lever for reducing global inequality and eliminating poverty?

Tourism and Sustainability critically explores the most significant universal geopolitical norms of the last half century – development, globalisation and sustainability – and through the lens of new forms of tourism demonstrates how we can better get to grips with the rapidly changing new global order. The fourth edition has been extensively revised and updated, and benefits from the addition of new material on climate change and tourism.

Drawing on a range of examples from across the Third World,Mowforth and Munt expertlyillustrate the social, economic and environmental conditions that continue to affect the tourism industry. With the first edition hailed by Geoffrey Wall as ‘one of the most significant books produced on tourism [since the turn of the millennium]’, Tourism and Sustainability remains the essential resource for students of human geography, environmental sciences and studies, politics, development studies, anthropology and business studies as well as tourism itself.

Reviews

Comments on the fourth edition:

"This book meets the continuing need for a clear-eyed, critical look at the global tourism industry and its sometimes uncomfortable relationship with ongoing problems of uneven development and inequality, especially in the less developed world. Mowforth and Munt write incisively of complex matters, yet their work has a real humanity at its core. This new edition will be a key resource for another generation of students and researchers."

Dr Mark Hampton, Reader in Tourism Management, University of Kent

Commonly associated with lightness and frivolity, with sand beaches and holidays, the authors fully succeed in their goal of repositioning tourism as a serious and important discipline within political science and development. In this fourth edition Mowforth and Munt masterfully accomplish what seemed impossible: they deepen further the enquiry, updating throughout with new events and case studies, and adding three new chapters bridging the links between tourism and poverty, human security, migration, terrorism and urbanisation. Never before has an analysis been so far-reaching, so present-to-day, so perceptive. An essential volume for students and academics across a wide range of disciplines and for all those interested in understanding our contemporary world through the powerful lens that tourism offers.

In short, this fourth edition updates the states of matter and analysis of the debates raised in the past, and introduces new issues that increasingly abundant academic literature has generated in recent years. It does so by staying away from the conformist or slightly reformist visions, as already mentioned, they are dominant. Thanks to all this, it remains a necessary reference text, essential to understand the development of the tourism phenomenon (especially in countries of the global South) and to meet the academic analysis done about it.

Jordi Gascón, Universitat de Barcelona & Foro de Turismo Responsable

Reviews on previous editions of Tourism and Sustainability:

‘This book should be compulsory reading for all those engaged in tourism research.’ – Erlet Cater, In Focus, Tourism Concern

‘…one of the most significant books produced on tourism in the past few years.’

– Geoffrey Wall, Annals of Tourism Research

‘A valuable and overdue contribution to a multi-disciplinary area. This book meets the challenge to say something clear and interesting in a quicksand of ambiguities.’

– Professor John Lea, University of Sydney

‘Informative, stimulating, and provocative, the book deserves to be read by a wide audience … It is absolutely essential reading for all those serious scholars of tourism studies wishing to appreciate "the bigger picture".’

– Brian Wheeller, Annals of Tourism Research

‘…the book is quite simply one of the most important theoretical contributions to the growing subdiscipline of tourism geography and is likely to be a mainstay for many years to come.’

– Keith Debbage, Annals of the Association of American Geographers

‘…a far-reaching, timely and quite penetrating critique of some of the forms of tourism that have emerged as a direct response to the clarion call for sustainable tourism development’

– Michael Parnwell, Journal of Development Studies

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Part 1 2. Globalisation, Sustainability, Development 3. Power and Tourism 4. Tourism and Sustainability Part 2 The Actors 5. A New Class of Tourist: trendies on the trail 6. Socio-Environmental Organisations: where shall we save next? 7. The Industry: lies, damned lies and sustainability 8. 'Hosts' and Destinations: for what we are about to receive..9. Governance, Governments and Tourism: selling the Third World Part 3 New Issues 10. Climate Change, Carbon Accounting and New Tourism 11. New Tourism and the Poor 12. New Tourism in Cities: guess who's coming to town? 13. Conclusion

About the Authors

Martin Mowforth is a freelance researcher specialising in issues of environment, development, sustainability and human rights in the region of Central America. He is also a part-time associate lecturer in human geography at Plymouth University, UK.

Ian Munt is a freelance human settlements specialist and has worked on projects with UN agencies, bilateral donors and non-governmental organisations in Central America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe.